We’re home! We made it. A little worse for wear and without our luggage, but home nonetheless. How to write a post that encompasses the last 3 weeks? It’s impossible. So, here are some random things:

• New Zealand is awesome. Getting there is not.
• Right now in NZ the summer is waning into autumn, which means that we had perfectly perfect weather. The kind of weather where you can be outside all day in a t-shirt without being too hot or too cold. I can’t tell you the temperatures, because they’re in Celsius and therefore meaningless to me. It was warm enough for the beach, but not quite warm enough to swim, which did not stop the male members of my family from doing so.
• We spent a lot of our time on the road visiting with old friends and family. New Zealand is breathtakingly beautiful and the kids couldn’t possibly give a smaller crap about the scenery. They can’t be bothered to look up from their Leapsters to take in the view, no matter that the view may be from a death-defying perch on a twisty narrow road overlooking the sea, sheep-dotted hills, and snow-capped mountains.
• For us, driving in New Zealand is a 2-man job. 1 person actually operates the vehicle, and the other sits shotgun reminding the driver to stay on the left-hand side of the road.
• On long haul flights children do not sleep. On short flights those same children fall into the soundest sleep possible and need to be roused upon landing. Of course, this sleep pattern is unexpected, no matter how many times it happens, so the children are not outfitted with the necessary pull-up on those short flights. Did S pee a full bladder’s worth on two separate occasions in her plane’s seat? Yes, yes she did.
• Children will ask “are we there yet?” and “are we in the sky yet?” before the plane has taxied away from the terminal.
• When asked what his favorite part of New Zealand was, L will say that it was playing on my iPad on the planes.
• Thanks to my mother-in-law, T and I were able to spend more time alone together than we have in years.
• Despite being told prior to our sea kayaking outing that we will either encounter a hundred dolphins or none, T and I saw one dolphin. Considering that dolphins are social creatures and generally are not found alone, we figured this dolphin is probably a real jackass.
• Unlike their sleepy adult counterparts, when children experience jet lag, they want to be awake. They act like crazy amped-up maniacs and cry every 5-10 minutes from 11:30 PM to 3:30 AM. In related news, I experienced no small joy when I got to wake my sleeping cherubs up this morning. It was a lights on, blankets ripped off kind of experience for them.

So there you have it. I’m back online and happy to be here. I’m exhausted and in Xanax detox. I still don’t have my luggage.

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